In a truly heartbreaking interview, a devastated “Today” show co-host Savannah Guthrie spoke at length publicly for the first time since her 84-year-old mother, Nancy Guthrie, went missing from her Arizona home on Jan. 31. Law enforcement believes Nancy was taken against her will.
Guthrie, through tears and a trembling voice, was interviewed by her friend and former “Today” show colleague Hoda Kotb, who has been filling in for Guthrie over the past two months.
The “Today” show aired part one and part two of the interview on Thursday, and will air part three today.
In a portion almost too unbearable to watch, Guthrie said she fears she is the reason her mother was apparently abducted, and she apologized over and over.
Guthrie said the details of what happened to her mother remain a mystery, but she said her brother saw right away what had likely happened.
“He said, ‘I think she’s been kidnapped for ransom,’” Guthrie said.
She then asked her brother if maybe she was the reason her mother was taken, and her brother told her, “I’m sorry, sweetie, but yeah, maybe.”
Guthrie continued, “But I knew that. I mean, I hope not. We still don’t know. Honestly, we don’t know anything. … So I don’t know that it’s because she’s my mom and somebody thought, ‘That lady has money — we could make a quick buck.’ I mean, that would make sense. But we don’t know.”
Guthrie then added, “But that’s probably — which is too much bear. To think that I brought this to her bedside. That it’s because of me. And I just say, ‘I’m so sorry, Mommy, I’m so sorry.’”
She then apologized to her entire family, adding, “If it is me, I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.”
Kotb, who was emotional during the interview as well, handled the conversation appropriately. She balanced empathy for her dear friend and her job as interviewer in asking the questions needed for Guthrie to open up about the details of the past two months.
They talked about the numerous ransom messages the Guthries received, many which were clearly false.
Guthrie said, “A person that would send a fake ransom note really has to look deeply at themselves, to a family in pain.”
However, Guthrie said she believed two of the messages were real.
She also talked about the false speculation that someone in the Guthrie family was responsible for Nancy’s abduction, calling such a suggestion “unbearable.”
Guthrie added, “It piles pain upon pain. There are no words. There are no words. I don’t understand. No one took better care of my mom than my sister and brother-in-law. And no one protected my mom more than my brother. And we love her and she is our shining light. She’s our matriarch. She’s all we have.”
The hardest part for the Guthrie family is not knowing for sure what happened.
Guthrie told Kotb that she felt God spoke to her in a moment of despair, when when she said she could not handle not knowing what happened to her mother.
Guthrie said, “And I heard a voice, and it said, ‘You do know where she is. She’s with me. She’s with me.’ So whether she is on this Earth still or whether she is in heaven, I know where she is. I know who she’s with. But we need to know.”
Not fake news
A week ago, The Atlantic reported that HBO host and comedian Bill Maher would receive the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor. The award is given out at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts under the leadership of the Trump administration. This will be the last Twain prize handed out there before the Kennedy Center shuts down for two years for renovations.
The choice of Maher seemed to be an unusual one, given his off-and-on, friendly-and-antogonistic relationship with Donald Trump. In fact, when The Atlantic published the story about Maher’s selection, the White House told the Kennedy Center that Maher would not receive the prize. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement, “This is fake news. Bill Maher will NOT be getting this award.” White House communications director Steven Cheung re-tweeted The Atlantic’s report and wrote, “Literally FAKE NEWS.”
Turns out, it’s literally not fake news. Maher is getting the award. It was announced on Thursday. Politico’s Daniel Lippman broke the story, quoting a source close to the situation who said, “Anonymous sources with half-baked information leaked to The Atlantic before conversations were finalized. There was nothing to confirm at the time and it is not appropriate to get ahead of any settled agreement between multiple parties involved.”
Another source told The Washin gton Post’s Travis M. Andrews and Janay Kingsberry, “This was false reporting at the time of the Atlantic’s reporting, but the situation changed after further conversations took place between the Trump- Kennedy Center and event organizers over the past week,
In other words, sounds like The Atlantic broke the story before the White House could announce it.
Whatever the case, Jeffrey Goldberg, editor in chief of The Atlantic, tweeted, “The Atlantic broke the story. The White House denied the story. Then the White House un-denied the story. They are often not very good at this sort of thing.”
Maher said in a statement, “Thank you to the Mark Twain people: I just had the award explained to me, and apparently it’s like an Emmy, except I win. I’d just like to say that it is indeed humbling to get anything named for a man who’s been thrown out of as many school libraries as Mark Twain.”
As well as being a comedian, Maher, 70, has been on TV for more than 30 years, hosting politically-themed talk/commentary shows. He hosted “Politically Incorrect” first on Comedy Central and then later on ABC. His current show, “Real Time With Bill Maher,” has been on HBO since 2003.
Past winners of the Twain Prize include Conan O’Brien, Kevin Hart, John Stewart, David Letterman, Carol Burnett, Tina Fey, George Carlin and Richard Pryor.
Federal judge rules against USAGM and Kari Lake again
For this item, I turn it over to my Poynter colleague, Angela Fu.
A federal judge ruled Thursday that the U.S. Agency for Global Media must give the Open Technology Fund the $43.5 million in funding Congress had allocated for it — marking yet another blow to the agency and its leader Kari Lake.
The Open Technology Fund is one of several nonprofits that receive federal funding from USAGM. Unlike the other organizations — which include broadcasters Radio Free Asia, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and Middle East Broadcasting Networks — the Open Technology Fund is not a newsroom but a project aimed at supporting global internet freedom, especially in countries with governments that engage in online censorship and surveillance. More than 2 billion people use tools supported by the fund including the encrypted messaging app Signal and the browser Tor, according to a USAGM factsheet from 2024.
The fund’s work ground to a halt last March when Lake, then the senior adviser of USAGM, withheld grants owed to the Open Technology Fund and the other grantee organizations. The Guardian found that the cuts jeopardized overseas efforts to circumvent online censorship, such as the development of “technologies that helped Iranians to coordinate during recent anti-government protests, and that allowed videos and images of massacres to reach the outside world.”
All four nonprofits sued USAGM and Lake for their grants last March, and U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth has at various points over the past year granted them incremental victories in their four different lawsuits. His Thursday ruling in favor of the Open Technology Fund marks the latest. Despite those wins in court, leaders at Radio Free Asia and Middle East Broadcasting Networks have said that the court-mandated funding they’ve received has been unpredictable, often arriving late. You can read more about how those newsrooms have diminished over the past year, thanks to USAGM’s and Lake’s actions here.
Lamberth’s Thursday ruling also comes just weeks after USAGM and Lake suffered a major loss in a lawsuit filed by employees at broadcaster Voice of America. Unlike the grantee organizations, Voice of America is a part of USAGM and saw its hundreds of journalists put on paid administrative leave last March. Nearly a year later, on March 7, Lamberth ruled that Lake had occupied her leadership position at USAGM illegally and voided many of her actions, including mass layoffs. He later ordered all 800 of Voice of America’s journalists back to work — an order USAGM recently claimed it could not comply with since it only has the capacity to onboard roughly 70 employees a week.
The legal challenges facing USAGM and Lake haven’t stopped there. On Monday, a different group of Voice of America employees filed a fresh lawsuit against the two, arguing that USAGM under Lake had violated Voice of America’s editorial independence by censoring certain news topics while promoting White House talking points.
In total, USAGM and Lake face seven different lawsuits for their actions against USAGM-affiliated organizations. Poynter has been tracking attacks on press freedom from them — and other parts of the Trump administration — in the Press Freedom Watch.
Media news, links and tidbits for your weekend review
- Now President Donald Trump is turning on The Wall Street Journal, calling them “terrible” over a story that said the president wants a speedy end to the war in Iran. Trump told reporters Thursday, “It would be nice if, like, the fake news New York Times, which writes so fake, and The Wall Street Journal is terrible, terrible. I mean, I read a story today that I’m desperate to make a deal. I’m not … I’m the opposite of desperate.”
- Deadline’s Jill Goldsmith with “Warner Bros. Discovery Sets Shareholder Vote On Sale To Paramount.”
- My Poynter colleague, Amaris Castillo, with “A quarter of US radio stations are religious, and most listeners aren’t tuning in for politics, study finds.”
- Marie Claire’s Noor Ibrahim with “Wendy McMahon Left CBS. She’s Not Done Making News.”
- The Washington Post’s Shira Ovide with “AI is just another technology Americans don’t like but can’t stop using.”
- The Wall Street Journal’s Sam Schube with “JFK Jr.’s Magazine Was a Bust. Now Everyone Wants a Copy.”
- The Atlantic’s Ellen Cushing with “The Worst Airport in America.”
- Awful Announcing’s Sean Keeley with “When sports journalists become podcasters, does the editorial process follow?”
- Baseball season has begun. And I’m with Wall Street Journal sports columnist Jason Gay on this one: “Who Will Yell at the Robot Umpires?”
More resources for journalists
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Have feedback or a tip? Email Poynter senior media writer Tom Jones at tjones@poynter.org.
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